


Remus, Summer of 1995

by JessaLRynn



Series: Glimpses [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Introspection, Late Night Conversations, angry werewolf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 21:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7480506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There are dangers involved of which you can have no idea, any of you..." What he said and what he thought about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remus, Summer of 1995

"What are you doing, Remus?" Sirius asks, sounding quite confused as Remus buries his head in his hands and groans in frustration.  
"I don't believe I just said that," Remus says, angrily, and picks up his mug and flings it at the wall.

It shatters into about four thousand pieces and Sirius, who has more often than not lately been the one to break things rather than fix them, jumps up and mutters a quiet reparo anyway. The mug jumps, whole, into the convict's hands and he sets it again on the table, but well out of Remus's reach this time, for which Remus is quietly grateful.

"Which bit?" Sirius asks finally, when Remus's silence has stretched too long - not long at all for Sirius, but much longer than it would have been when they were young. There is a wariness in his tone, an unspoken accusation, as though he expects Remus to berate him for the things he said as well. But Remus is not that stupid, not at the moment, and is feeling too guilty for his own daft words to complain about anything Sirius might or might not have said and whether it could have made matters worse.

"It wasn't really a lie, was it?" Remus asks, hopelessly, feeling drained and bewildered and self-conscious. "I had to say it didn't I?"

"You've told no lies that I know of," Sirius agreed. "Except to Tonks, and I gather that's not what you're on about?"

"No."

They sit in silence a while longer, and Remus knows Sirius is quietly seething - something that a young Sirius would never have done. Rather, he would have raged and stormed and that is what Remus would like to do now. But he doesn't want to set Sirius off. And he doesn't want to set himself off. And he really, really doesn't want to set off either of the two harridans. That isn't how he thinks of one of them most days, but tonight he could have cheerfully stuffed them both into a closet together and let them fight it out to see who could be the most furious female creature in this filthy mad house.

She is wrong, and he knows it, though he is hard put to decide what she is most wrong about. She loves, and she gives, and she cares, and none of those things is wrong or even slightly bad. But the way she does it, the way she continues to do it... It has driven Sirius to the brink of fury, and it has driven Remus himself into a hot-headed and uncharacteristically thick statement that even now makes him want to pound his head into the table until he can't hear his own voice making rash proclamations in his head.

"Harry," he confesses finally, after what has started to feel like an interrogation, though Sirius has remained silent and virtually motionless throughout.

Sirius glares at him. But all he says is, "And?" A simple word and it is enough to drive Remus the rest of the way into a silent rage. He stands and snatches up the mug, hurtling it at the wall again, following it with the other two mugs on the table and then, just to punctuate his sheer anguish, he hurls his own chair at the wall and watches with some satisfaction as it explodes into matchsticks.

"She's going to blame me for that," Sirius says. Unsaid, he leaves the very true statement that she somehow blames him for everything.

His anger spent, Remus deflates and sinks wearily onto the nearest chair, one he didn't hurtle into the wall. "I'll fix it," he says, but only drops his head onto the table, exhausted, and wishing that he had never opened his mouth.

He can feel Sirius watching him, feel the hollow, burning eyes staring into the back of his head, but he just sits there, drowning in the wave of self-revulsion. This goes on for some time, and he only looks up when he hears the sound of a glass being clicked onto the table right in front of him. He looks up warily and finds Sirius pouring too much smoky amber liquid into the fine lead crystal.

"Drink this," Sirius orders, "and then tell me what the hell is wrong with telling Harry this?"

Remus reaches for the glass, takes a swallow, and almost chokes on it as he realizes that Sirius thinks he's angry about the wrong thing. He sputters and coughs but manages to choke out a wheezy, "It's not that," between gasps. He wipes the tears from his suddenly streaming eyes and draws a careful breath. It doesn't kill him, so he tosses back the liquor, wishing Snape had poisoned it while the greasy bastard was here. No such luck, though. You just can't count on the merciless sod for anything.

"Harry has to know!" Sirius grinds out, and then drinks straight from the bottle, pointedly ignoring the spots of spittle and liquor Remus coughed onto the table. Remus winces, but supposes it could be worse. The alcohol will probably kill any germs and probably eat a hole in the finish, too.

"I agree," he admits finally. "Not everything, though," he allows, at which Sirius shakes his head.

"He's not like James, Remus," Sirius declares fiercely. Remus isn't startled by this explanation, but he wishes to God and Merlin that she could have heard that. "James may not have liked it, but he did understand there were things going on he didn't know about." Sirius shakes his head again, as though by shaking it he can get the facts to go away. It apparently does no good, as he downs another gulp and puts the bottle on the table. "He knew that not everything was his problem. Harry doesn't have that luxury."

How true that is, and how absolutely horrific. Not that Sirius ever thinks clearly where Harry is concerned, because he loves the boy, but every once in awhile, he is clear-eyed and correct simply because he has not known him for so long. Every once in awhile, the fact that these others have loved the actual boy while Sirius loved only the vague memory of an infant long grown comes through in the fact that while the others would spare him pain and the truth with it, Sirius would gift him both pain and truth and love him all the while to try to bring him through it. It is something that Remus both despises and admires in the shattered Animagus.

"I know that, Padfoot, I know it." He jumps to his feet again and starts pacing between the swinging door and the rubble on the floor, waving his arms frantically to make his point. "Merlin singing Dumbledore's ditties, do you think I can't understand why you want him to know? But you have to see it our way..." He stops, realizes he's trying to defend himself, which is the last thing he wants to do, and he knows he's wrong, anyway. He sinks, again, back into the chair. "Nevermind, Sirius. Just... forget it."

"What the hell is going on in your fuzzy head, Remus!" Sirius says it like a question, but it is a demand, an insistent plea. He is grasping the bottle in his hand, almost too tightly, and brandishing it in Remus's direction, though not quite at an angle that will cause the alcohol to pour out. Remus is not surprised at this - Sirius has never been one to waste good booze.

"You heard what I said to him, right?"

"Yeah," Sirius admits. "Every word of it. What's wrong, didn't get the right inflection?" His tone is lightly mocking, reminding Remus so much of the boy he grew up with that only his eyes remind him that the child has been blasted away by despair.

"No, I said something completely..." He frowns. What was wrong with the sentence anyway? He pauses in surprise a moment, then looks up at Sirius with a weak grin. "Something completely arrogant and... Prongs-like."

"Oh, that." Sirius grins back at him. "You mean that pompous-ass declaration about danger?"

Remus feels his cheeks color and snatches the bottle away from Sirius, pouring and downing a new glass in the hope of blaming his high color on the hooch.

"Didn't tell him that one of them was falling asleep in a popular corridor, did you? Or sitting in the wrong stinking bushes and ending up with thorns in your arse? Or getting told off by Alastor Moody for wearing the wrong colored shirt on a Thursday? Or having _her_ strip the hide off of you because some foul thing or other has taken up residence some place you can't bloody help?"

Remus knows his cheeks are quite red, now, and actually drinks from the bottle this time, just to hide his face from view. "I can't believe I said it, Sirius. I told a boy who's confounded the most powerful dark wizard ever, four times that he couldn't understand the dangers. I claimed in my arrogance that I had a better idea of the situation than a girl who manages to piece together from a half-dozen tiny clues the whole facts of any given disaster. I told the boy who stood on a broken leg between his best friend and a convicted murderer that there were terrible things out there. As if they care, Sirius, as if that will stop them. _Voldemort_ himself can't take them; I've got no idea why I suddenly thought a werewolf and a mad woman were any match for them."

"Moony," Sirius says then, in the same calming, soothing tones he always uses on the mornings after Remus's transformations, "stop." He puts both hands on Remus's shoulders, a strangely familiar gesture that makes the werewolf feel like a fifteen year old boy again. "Don't do this," Sirius adds, someone else's line from by-gone days, and it's almost like Sirius is two people at once, one that was always a gentle, giving friend, and one that grew up to become one. The alcohol is starting to play funny in Remus's head and for a split second, the lights superimpose James's youthful face on Sirius's haggard one. Remus wants to cry out in shock and fear but Sirius smiles one of his Azkaban-rarified smiles and the illusion is broken.

" _The truth,_ " Sirius quotes, " _is a beautiful and terrible thing_." He frowns then, and shakes his head. "But I don't think it's a complete lie to say things you wish were true. Especially not when you wish them with all your heart."

Remus relaxes then, and smiles, the guilt easing up at last. "It would be nice, wouldn't it," he says softly. "If it were true, that they have no idea what the dangers are, that the world had never let so much dark horror be visited on children?"

"Maybe," says Sirius. "But maybe they're stronger than we are and that's why they refuse it, too. Go on upstairs, Moony, I'll clean up in here and I think Tonks probably passed out in your bed again."

Remus frowns then and another guilt settles on him. Another lie, this one deliberate.

Sirius shakes his head at him again, and pulls out his wand. "Don't think about it, now, Moony. Everything is going to be fine, you're going to live happily ever after and have pretty little multi-colored werewolf babies."

And Remus heads for the stairs, thinking Sirius is probably very, very wrong, but it is nice to know that even after all of this, his last best friend wishes him such happiness, and that he wishes it with all his heart.


End file.
